


I touch beyond the event horizon.

by chaede



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Character Study, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Morality, Far Future, Human Experimentation, Hurt No Comfort, One Shot, Post-Apocalypse, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Short Story, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28239450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaede/pseuds/chaede
Summary: GREY holds me like a toddler might a doll, with affection for an object which cannot return those emotions. Emotions are forbidden, though they weren’t removed from our genetic blueprints. And I cry with him.GREY pronounces, “Your name is ONE.”I know to spell our names in capitals. I know more than real humans ever could. As has GREY and every one of us before him.I was born with millennia of knowledge.
Relationships: ONE & GREY, ONE & The World
Kudos: 5





	I touch beyond the event horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> This is something i have been working on for a few years now, for months at a time, a character study part of a greater universe I wish to write about. This is the first original work I have ever published anywhere, so I am worried about things such as theft and plagiarism of this most precious brainchild. So please don't.

My first memories are of my release from incubatory stasis. Artificial amniotic fluid sticking to my body. Impact on a metal floor. Bruises forming on my knees. Learning to shiver. Big warm hands pick me up, remove the umbilical and sub-cranial cords. And when I open my eyes, I see a man like me in tears.

GREY holds me like a toddler might a doll, with affection for an object which cannot return those emotions. Emotions are forbidden, though they weren’t removed from our genetic blueprints. And I cry with him.

GREY pronounces, “Your name is ONE.”

I know to spell our names in capitals. I know more than real humans ever could. As has GREY and every one of us before him.

I was born with millennia of knowledge. 

Our construction was perfected thousands of years ago—bodies with little muscle, glassy eyes, the plainest of faces, minimal hereditary genes. We are premeditated, genetically programmed humans for a future our designers could only predict. We have a duty to continue, with the exclusive worldly knowledge uploaded to the Ginnungagap System, otherwise lost to time.

That duty, at its core, is simple: Prevent the repetition of history.

Ginnungagap is visually comparable to a bioluminescent cave. Shelves of technological masterpieces and terminals line the subterranean halls, storing information uploaded and saved throughout the age of programming. Ginnungagap has then documented everything since its creation; from its creators, the data of all mankind accessible since, till the end of that civilisation, and the age of us replicant operators. From the fall of the Old World and all mankind’s contemporary wisdom, till the recording of my birth and GREY’s most recent log entries. Its images of the Old World teach me colours. What satellites remain are my view of the world now. Coding, programming, and calculations are second nature to me. My only company is GREY and the Artificial Narrow Intelligences; observers keeping the world alive, machines upholding the ecology, a fallen era’s final designs.

Much of the data is in English, but also Arabic, Mandarin, and Spanish. GREY and I only speak the first with the system and each other. I often fancied studying one of these languages, one spoken by billions, or perhaps another spoken by only a few thousand people, with all the material available to me. But beyond translating unique information into English, a task which has already been completed by past operators, there is so little point. All of them are equally extinct, remaining unspoken in this graveyard of their cultures and societies.

Even so, among all the factual data, one thing seems to be missing—the key to complete access over the entire system. GREY and I are supposedly the highest beings, yet the humans of the past did not entrust their creations with the ability to change what they had ordained. The System’s programming cannot be altered. The AIs cannot be overwritten. Records of the Old World cannot be deleted. Barriers cannot be hacked.

As I research this, I feel GREY place his hand on mine. His eyes are red; he’s been crying again.

I reach up and wipe the tear tracks with my small hands. “History, or the outside?”

He doesn’t answer again. We both know that when I find out, it will be too soon. I open my arms and he picks me up, pressing me against his chest, squeezing until I am short of breath. 

“It occurs to me that they’re right, those insurgents, scientists and revolutionaries outside. They say that I lie, that I inhibit their progress, and they’re right. But what can I do? Confess the truth?” He leans back against a wall of computers, then slides down until his thighs trap me against his chest. “I want to say it so badly. ‘I am a liar! I am the enemy! Kill me! Burn me!’ …But I would be condemning the world to an uncertain future…”

All other humans outside are deluded to the world’s reality, as has been planned since the very creation of Ginnungagap. Unfortunately, it is human nature to long for greater, even forbidden, knowledge. That is what, ultimately, condemned the humans of the past. Banning scientific research means they simply search for knowledge in places they cannot so easily be found, secret societies which reject their sovereign’s words. It is no wonder some previous operators caved and allowed human progress. And for every generation’s failure, another must double his efforts to prevent the project’s collapse, history’s dreaded repetition. GREY is not one who has resigned himself to the doom of his mission, yet. It hurts him so much.

“Relative stasis is better…” he continues. “It just is… I can’t fail like the others did. You can’t either. We can’t fail. We can’t fail...”

He keeps on mumbling those words. I press my ear against his chest and listen for his heartbeat. There it is… The slow, rhythmic thudding of life from the only organism I know. It won’t last. GREY only embraces me when one of us is truly despaired.

* * *

GREY leaves our static isolation to reign the oblivious people outside, to eat, to bring me food. The food is simple at first, easy on my young stomach, but every meal is that little bit richer to help me build strength. I spend my days following the schooling established by operators of the past, preparing me for the day GREY expires, for lack of a better word. When he returns, he rarely has the energy to entertain me.

I can see he is honestly trying to raise me kindly, but the mission makes that almost impossible. When he is not distressed, the little time he does spend with me is usually educational. He shares precisely chosen literary recommendations, in response to happenings outside, an unorthodox entry in my logs, or a slip of my tongue. He reinforces the ideas I already know, the ideas we incarnate, until I wonder if he is actively trying to delude himself.

He says our responsibility is inhuman. His rare laughs are pathetic and hopeless. For all the information I have possessed since birth, I hold no memories of his joy.

He says I will die miserable. I’ve seen that line in every documentation by predecessors, always with the same bitterness. I checked once if pessimism is a trait in our genetic code, if such a thing can even be programmed, and found the opposite. I also found a three hundred-and-fifty-two-year-old audio file attached—it is largely profanity.

* * *

My eyes are so used to seeing hardware and software, technology and biology, black and white. I see the sky turning dark, the endless winter, the world suffocating, drowning, crumbling, burning, dying. I see the artificially intelligent machinery removing the pollution, the poisons, stopping the earth’s collapse, the raging fires. The Old World’s end, and the New World’s construction under our forebears’ reigns. The entire reason history must never repeat, why we, the AIs, and Ginnungagap exist.

These became memories during incubation. They haunt me at night, make me unable to see, hear, feel, unable to tell what’s real and what’s long gone, until GREY comes and lets me sleep in his embrace. His regal garments sometimes make me cry harder, knowing we alone understand the truth of this world. He holds me tighter, but he cannot make this stop. The injected data teaches much of the world, of our mission, of century-long strategies and lies to justify our sovereignty over a forcibly primitive people, but not of how I should stop crying under the burden of maintaining the stability of the world itself.

Sometimes I rest against a computer, or on a spot on the floor that is heated by the technology’s works. It’s a nice change from Ginnungagap’s unchanging 294.15 K. I welcome the slight burn of it.

“It’s grounding,” I tell GREY, “and warm.”

“That’s not a good thought to have,” he says, as if my brain isn’t filled with information on mental health. As if I don’t know he’s done the same. As if I don’t hear him crying himself to sleep.

So, when GREY says I’ll die wishing I’d never lived, I believe him.

I must remind myself to keep my emotions at bay at the thought of it. How could the humans of the past create these projects? Are we nothing but tools designed to maintain fabricated pillars for the world?

Of course we are. Everything is ordained. Every replicant before us had the same life, the same lifespan, the same lifecycle. The only thing GREY was truly free to choose was my name. In that moment of hopelessness, it is the only spiteful thing he has ever done.

ONE, a unit which changes little to nothing.

* * *

At forty-one years old, GREY’s heart fails. This was also decided millennia ago. The time limit accounts for the security of the mission and the beliefs outside. He collapses as he is finalising his log entry, crying for me and clawing at his chest. When I find him, I know this is what has happened. I am physically sixteen years old but mature beyond my age. I have around a quarter century left and nothing more, just as he did.

The cold hands which cleaned me, dressed me, cared for me, however distantly, ever since my birth into unforgiving Ginnungagap, feebly caress my face. I hug him in return.

“I’m so sorry for you,” he says, and kisses my hairline. I stay like that, holding him in my lap until his body grows cold and dead, and then I stay some more.

Four hours and thirty-seven minutes after his heart failed, I documented it in my first logbook entry as his replacement and began the arduous task of dragging his body up the staircase and to the surface. 

* * *

Before I take his throne, I tell myself the strictures to be upheld. I must prevent history’s repetition.

When I finally leave Ginnungagap and see the world of information which is mine alone, I want to cry. But I am not permitted to be emotional. I know why, now.

I feel the crushing weight of the duties forsaken on my shoulders, feel the optimism drilled into my genetic code wilt, feel my heart grow as cold as the cybernetics I’ve come to loathe, as the crown upon my head.

I see the tombs of the previous operators, remembered as great, wise, and cold rulers. GREY is there, too. His name is misspelled, and the monument never visited out of love or grief. I want to cry. I want to grieve. I want to scream. Instead, I imagine the taste of blood from biting my tongue. It is metallic like a vice.

I ascend.

I am the ruler of a world that does not know itself. I am to stop the repetition of history. I am an omniscient being.

I remember a better world. I do not tell stories. 


End file.
